Sock Drawers
by MJP
Summary: [Chap. 5 up: Kagura] When everyone looks the same at school, there are very few ways to express the person that you are. This is the story of six different girls who express themselves one of the few ways they can at school: the socks they wear every da
1. Black Socks

**A/N**: This idea has been bubbling in my gut for some time now, but I wanted to keep it on hold until I finished up some progress on my other fics. I just couldn't hold it back, though. 

This is a series of vignette-ish one-shots. They're a little bit on the short side, but I'll take what Shakespeare said to heart: "brevity is the essence of wit."

Constructive criticism is GREAT. But I'm just happy I got the drive to write this story. Enjoy!

**_Prologue _**

Since the end of its feudal period in 1868, Japan has constantly excelled in its raw academics. Even now as the nation is going through a soul-searching period as to its position in the world's cultural and economic spheres, the Japanese educational system still consistently turns out massively impressive results.

While Japanese students are exemplary in the arts and sciences, critics point to the fact that they are overworked and overburdened. They assert that the Japanese educational process drains students of personality in a Confucian cultural setting.

Despite this, Japanese students are not a single group of mindless drones. Despite the nation's penchant for highlighting group identity instead of individual identity, cultural critic Karl van Wolferen once wrote "I believe that Japan is a nation of individuals, all 120 million of them."

No better example of this can be seen than the sailor uniform. Shortened in Japanese to _seifuku_, the school uniform for girls varies in pattern and type from school to school. Students often incorporate _seifuku_ design into their choice of schools. A wide range exists; the girls' uniform can be a Western-esque blazer and skirt, whereas most schools adopt variations of the sailor type. While most American attitudes decry the uniformity as a stomping on individuality and freedom of expression, most Japanese students do not mind the uniforms. However, the uniforms do limit how a student can express their individuality to very few items: jewelry (Often banned or regulated while in uniform), shoes (Often restricted as well; moreover, indoor shoes are almost universally the same plan white slipper style), hair (Also somewhat regulated), etc. About the only thing not enforced is what type of socks to wear.

An old adage says that you can find out a lot about someone by their sock drawer.

* * *

**_Sock Drawers_**

_**1: Black Socks**_

* * *

Maybe I just want to fade into the background. 

Am I supposed to be anonymous? Or should I stand out? It's not like I don't feel like I'm worth it, but I've always felt comfortable on my own, not really depending on others. Yes, I was a little wistful about it in junior high and elementary school... especially since a lot of people made it difficult for me. "Look at the _gaijin!_" they would fake-whisper, like I wasn't Japanese just because I was a few centimeters taller than they were. It got worse when I started... well... developing... but I don't like to talk about that too much.

Even as I get dressed in the morning, I try not to blush as I look at myself. I have a lot to be confident about, that's for sure. I'm good at what I do. Just because I want to. I know that there's so much riding on my future by what I do in high school... even though there's a recession, even though the economy is changing, I'd still look better if I did well enough on my entrance exams to get into a really good college. Even Tokyo University graduates basically coast through four years to get a degree, then they get swept right up. Lifetime employment with one company isn't the norm, but at least you'd get a job.

So I thought I'd get lost in the process, maybe just be a decent enough student. I know I'd do well at whatever I put my mind to.

Was there something wrong with not wanting to be recognized for it?

Ever since grade school, we've been told "_ganbare_;" to do our best, to persevere. I did well enough at what I did in school and I did wonderful in sports. I did my best. I still do my best.

Here I am now, the product of all that work. I do well enough in class... of course, nobody can top Chiyo-chan, and I often reach up there with Yomi-san's scores. Kagura-san keeps jibing at me being her rival, but I don't really have any sort of rivalry like that with her. I don't feel the need to compete in sports. I just wanted to do my best. So I did.

I don't need the praise... it's not like I try to dodge it, it's not like I want to be ignored... but I just want to be me, see what **I** can do, understand myself that much better.

I don't think it's a matter of expectations... I'm a good student, a good athlete, and for some reason, the girls in class started to look up to me. Was it just because I was selfish enough when everyone else was joining teams and clubs to be living for myself? Was there something wrong with me because I would sigh at the Japanese edition of Cat Fancy magazine? I pursued my interests, and while I wasn't shunned for it... I wanted to feel like I was doing something for myself.

I really don't know why I hide in the background. I want to be unseen, but I _want_ to do things that make me seen. If I really wanted to be unnoticed, would I do what I do? If I wanted to be on my own...

If I wanted to be on my own, would I have friends like I do now?

I don't really know the answers to this. They're questions that I try not to question. I don't ignore them, but I don't approach them. They're just these big, nebulous blobs of "Why?" that crop up.

Maybe I stand out, but even though we're all dressed alike, I try to blend into the background.

From the calf down, I try to fade into the background, but from the calf up, it's Sakaki the wonder girl. Sakaki the lone wolf, Sakaki the 12th best in the grade. Despite my best efforts, and despite dressing as basic as possible, despite black socks, I stand out.

It isn't such a bad thing, but I keep wondering if I really do feel this need for some other drive, some other force that wants me to step out and be noticed. I never thought I'd sing karaoke, despite doing it well, but I'll never forget how hard I blushed afterwards.

Maybe I don't want to envy more outgoing girls, but something just keeps pushing me towards that.

Black socks have their limits sometimes like that...


	2. Orange Socks

**A/N**: This one was kinda tricky to write, as I've always had a similar philosophy to what Tomo talks about here. It's kinda a long story of how I got it, so I wanted to sort of simplify and Azumanga-ify the way she would lookon such an ideology within the bounds of her character.I had to go back and watch a few episodes to really get a handle on who, what, where, when, why, how, and this was what I came up with as an interpretation. I hope you like it!

Big thanks to everyone who left a review. I'd like to respond to a couple specifically, and I'll do that in an afterword rather than make you people scroll past too much of my babble. Feel free to get critical in your reviews, people; it'll help me to write better!

On with the show!

* * *

_**2: Orange Socks**_

So what if I go off on tangents with Osaka all the time? So what if I'm raising hell, teasing people, getting teased back, and reacting like a child to it?

Every day at school, I get yelled at for not having done my homework. I think it's worth it. I get to laugh at myself for it, and I get to laugh at others for it, too. It's just something dumb I do to make things fun... sometimes I get laughed at for it, but other times I just get blank stares. Nobody _wants_ to look like an idiot. Everyone's got their noses in books, burning pencil after pencil to try and make it into the Best College. Then they get into the Best Company and stay there for the rest of their lives if they're lucky.

So what if I have to be an idiot to get people to laugh? So what if I have to spin headlong into a desk to get people to look at me like I'm an idiot? Come on, loosen up a little.

I like to laugh, and there's nothing wrong with laughing at someone. I'm OK with people laughing at me. I'm a human being; I think it's funny when someone messes something up. I'd be lying to myself and to everyone else if I didn't say it's funny. If I ever cry, it's almost always theatrical... unless it's that time Sakaki's stupid cat that scratched me that one time. I see it everywhere; people want to laugh at a minor misfortune, at an annoyance to someone else. It's unhealthy to bottle things up. It's OK to have fun, and when fun can't be had, you've got to _make_ fun.

I don't pick on people; it's not like I'm a bully... it's just all those points of opportunity that just crop up from time to time. It lightens the situation up a little. It turns a slip and fall into "Tomo, that isn't funny!" all while I'm laughing my ass off.

They never laugh anymore, that's the problem.

It's not like people don't have the _ability_ to laugh. Just because we're Japanese doesn't mean we're all born samurai, salarymen, or office ladies, and just because we're high school students doesn't mean we've gotta sit around like robots.

They have robots in factories, and you don't see them laughing... then again, there are robots in the high-rises, too. Come on. There's got to be other ways to live.

Why else would I bug Yomi since we were in cribs? She's like the example of everything I'm trying to do. Every single poke, prod, or joke I made at her expense comes back with a bluster of yelling, a smack upside my head, et cetera. She's like clockwork. I could have sworn she never wanted

You've got to make fun... yeah. You've gotta stand up, be an idiot, and act, wear, or be something that goes totally against the way that everyone else is. Uniforms? Psh. If I'll be kicked out of school for wearing non-uniform clothes, I'll fall into that little line... but they never said anything about our socks.

The orange of my socks doesn't even match with the red or blue of our uniforms. They draw attention and curious looks. I even have shoes that match. It's like my calves down is uncontrolled by school rules, and damned if I don't want to make the most of it. Sure, I want to look cute, but I am who I am. What I wear, though... clothes are the best thing I can use to get it across. I don't want to look like everyone else. Look at me! Point and whisper! Whatever it is, just get angry, laugh, scowl, inquire... break it up a little!

I wear 'em every day. I wear 'em just because I want to, just because it's how things _work_ for me. Every single time Yomi babbles on about some crap about the importance of appearance, or how I don't take things seriously, I just laugh and throw it right back at her. It's hard to get her to laugh back, but it happens.

That's what wearing orange socks is all about. I want to be the origin of laughter for everyone I know. Chaos? Childishness? Random harmless violence? That's just the means of getting to the end. It's worth it, too.

Yomi laughs. She doesn't want to admit it, but I make her laugh. Even if I can't get everyone in Japan to laugh at me – as nice as that might be – it's worth it if I can get my uptight friend to laugh. Whether it's at how dumb I am, something that I broke, or my loud fashion sense.

* * *

**Afterword A/N: **I know I already spoke to Pete Z. at one point (I _think_ I did E-mail you about that... my brain is gone... ) but I wanted to put my manifesto up publicly as a point of reference to all the other readers. 

Anyway, my responses and explanations to a couple of reviews:

**TheTrueWolfBrother**: I see where you're coming from, but in this case, "selfish" seems to be more pointing towards "self-conscious." I interpreted her confidence with her actions in the manga and anime, e.g. taking charge in the race, not being iffy about showing her enjoyment of cats after a while (Example: in the beginning, she concealed the plush toys from Kaorin, but later she doesn't hesitate to share notes with Necoconeco drawings with Kagura, etc.) and other factors. I think she's more confident than many people would give her credit for; a lot of her self-effacement is Japanese etiquette at work.

**Pete Zaitcev**: I really didn't want to touch KaorinxSakaki... I've never been good at portraying romantic feelings in a same-sex situation. I hesitate to write things I'm not familiar with... Mark Twain said it best: "write what you know about." I was more focused on drawing out her general character, not as much her relationship potential. I also see Kaorin's feelings as more of a one-sided infatuation/crush; while I sympathize with her, I don't see enough of Kaorin's character save for "I HEART SAKAKI!" to work her into a story. I'll leave that to the writers who are really good at that sort of thing.


	3. Mismatched Socks

**A/N:** You thought it couldn't be done for Osaka, huh?

To Dana, who submitted an anon review: I'm glad you liked, but your E-mail got blanked out. I'd suggest you get an ID to leave signed reviews... authors tend to like those. ;;

To Q Illespont: Very good point about the Sakaki dichotomy. I was really trying to emphasize the aspect of black being a stand-out color in a society of white socks. Even so, there's the aspect of black darkness. I'll look into fine-tuning the whole shebang in the future. Thanks for pointing out the grammar error, too; I'm compiling all my errors in all my fics for one big-ass orgy of export/update/re-release in the future. It'd be great if ff dot net worked with real-time editing, wouldn't it? --

I tried hard to capture the dub voice of Osaka as a representation of the Kansai dialect. There's basically no real equivalency to Kansai in English, so just think the dub, people. It's as Osaka as it gets. Although I would have loved for her to have a Jersey accent... "Yo, Tomo, how you doin'!"

Enough babble. Sorry this release took so long, but Osaka is HARD to write for in this idiom. OO

On with the show!

_**3: Mismatched Socks**_

I'm usually a lot better in the mornings than this. I haven't woken up with the blanket at the food of my bed, wondering why I was so cold. My mom says that it's nothin' to worry about, that my body's controllin' what I do when I sleep, but that's pretty creepy. I mean, it's like sleepwalking... how do you know where to go? If it were up to my brain, I'd do somethin' useful if I sleepwalked... why not go to the store and get some more milk or edamame? We never have any edamame in the house anymore.

Yeah, I know that's outta nowhere. It's all right. Usually I don't sleepwalk to the convenience store anyway. I don't think I sleepwalk at all, unless you count takin' a long time to wake up. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much time I spend in the bath, just gettin' my body nice and comfy and ready for bed, when I go to sleep, I stay asleep for a good long time.

Still, every mornin' when I get up, I'm cold and I can never seem to get outta my pajamas. I just wanna stay in 'em all day; they're comfy and they've got Necoconeco prints on 'em. What's wrong with Necoconeco? I mean, even if it's just some little character icon aimed at Chiyo-chan, it's OK to like what you like I mean, I like my pajamas. We oughta be able to wear 'em. Every day, we gotta wear our school uniforms. That's no fun... I mean, they're nice, and it's not so bad. It just makes me feel like I'm some kinda amoeba in one of those... um...

Well, maybe not an amoeba...

Why are they red in the winter, anyway? I heard someplace once that you gotta wear red so that blood doesn't show. Maybe we're goin' to war against some evil capitalists, that's why we're wearin' red! Miss Yukari's gonna be our commissar, and we're gonna have to fight the Nazis...

Which reminds me... we don't have a rival or anything. It's kinda weird that our school just has its own little thing going on, no school cheers or anythin' like that. We were in town at the Yoshinoya Beef Bowl place and some other school's kids were talkin' "We're gonna beat Hokuei High in academics this year!" I don't even have someone to fight against like Kagura-chan does. I'm just goin' around wanting to be in my pajamas all day. Nice and comfy.

Is there somethin' wrong with that?

I wish there wasn't, 'cause I'd love to go to school in my PJs and blanket. I like bein' warm too much, even durin' the summer. I sweat a lot in my PJs and it just feels nice, like I'm sleepin' in the bath. That happened to me once and I got all red, really woozy, too. I guess I get pretty frail in the heat. I got plenty of hats and things for when summer really gets bad. I don't tan like Kagura-chan does; I just burn really easily. Yeah, when it gets hot, I get woozy _and_ I peel too much, too. See, I'm too disoriented in the mornings because of all the cold. I kick off the covers in my sleep and I get all chilly. I wanna stay under my blanket, but my body thinks otherwise.

I don't care if my socks don't match up. I have my uniform and shoes hung up, so all I gotta do is put on my underwear, socks, and go. 'course, I never match the bra and panties. Nobody's gonna see those, though. But my socks are always mismatched, even though they're all white. One's a crew sock, the other's dressy. It's always like that in the morning. It's because I'm all cold and can't think right.

I figure if I at least get up and go, I'm doin' enough. I can worry about studyin' and bein' a good student when that all comes up.

I can't complain too much. I've got it better just by goin' to school. I don't mind much else in the world. I can worry about stayin' warm when I get home. Just so long as I can keep it up after I'm out in the world.


	4. Brown Stockings

**A/N: **Sorry again for the delay, but this project kinda fell through, much like my other projects. It went through about five or six restarts. I couldn't really find a voice for Yomi. I thought writing for Osaka was a challenge...

Let me reassure you all that I am not an angsty teenage girl. This is intended to be a composite of women that I've known and their points of view. Real women are more than welcome to contact me for any technical or content-based inconsistencies. Hopefully this does something good and doesn't sound like babble. Maybe it actually works.

On with the show!

* * *

_**4: Brown Stockings**_

School starts at 8:20 AM every morning. Monday through Saturday, with a half-day on Saturday.

Homeroom. Updates on the school. Miss Yukari's normal whining.

Sakaki-SAN is always on time, in her desk, waiting for the bell and the teacher.

First period. English. More Miss Yukari. I find it hard to believe that she can teach anything. I just tune her out. Hers is the only class where keeps telling us to ask questions. I hate asking questions. I hate not knowing something.

Chiyo-chan needs to work on her pronunciation. She barely even has to try. She never has to make an effort to learn. She only has to make an effort to simply exist. She doesn't seem to suffer. She doesn't seem to do anything. She just does it.

Second period. Classical Japanese. Mr. Kimura. He creeps me out. We know – no, we HOPE that he's harmless. But just the fact that he's looking at me, considering my body on whatever sick standard he has... that's just horrible. Those eyes looking me up and down... considering every single excess bit of fat, every size over what I should be, every single imperfection... I don't want to think about it. I don't want to be considered on his standards. Don't look at me. Don't anyone look at me. This isn't how I want to be.

It's like this every day.

Third period. Math. The numbers don't lie. They never lie. I keep studying and studying them, and somehow I manage to do well. It doesn't matter how poorly I'm doing in English. I could even get as low as an 85 in English and the numbers still look the same. Ichi, ni, san, yon; one, two, three, four... all the same. Formulas. Adding. Subtracting. One melon bread plus one red bean taiyaki equals four hundred and seventy calories, eight grams of fat, two and a half grams of saturated fat. That minus 100 milligrams of fiber supplements, eight glasses of water, and a shot of ginseng supplement equals next to zero calories over. Divide that by thirty days in the month and I'm not too far over budget. That plus a salad for breakfast, small yakisoba bread for lunch, small bowl of rice, piece of salmon, and miso soup for dinner and there's so much when I multiply it, still. So many numbers.

Tomo-chan just yelled something about dividing the desk into two. A second later, I heard a thunk and a whine of pain. That's how it is with her. Thunk. Pain. Thunk. Pain. Execution and result. Operation and summation. Nothing about absorbing. No regard to what happens. Subtraction, subtraction, subtraction.

Fourth period. P.E. Miss Kurosawa seems to give half a damn about how well we do. She just has us all give it our best shot. This is the second time I exercise in the usual weekday; I usually run from six to seven AM before I shower and then probably skip breakfast.

Kagura-san doesn't care about anything but doing well at what she wants. She'll run lap after lap just to get better at swimming. She doesn't deserve to look like that. Everyone tells me our bodies are exactly the same, that I'm really cute, or something else. Like I can compare. Like I don't know they're lying. I look like a cow in this swimsuit.

I hate the mornings. After I change out of those PE clothes, my legs looking like huge chunks of flesh, I get dressed again. "Control top" my ass. I need to cram my exposed skin into something that just doesn't make me look so chunky. I don't care if I'm at the "right weight for my height;" I still can't measure up. Tomo-chan looks boyish. Sakaki-san is perfect. Even Osaka can look good once she wears one of those damn dresses of hers. Chiyo-chan barely counts. I can't measure up to Kagura-san; the time she spends practicing, I spend studying.

Fifth period. Lunch. I just don't want to talk about it, okay?

Osaka... just doesn't seem to worry. She's as flat as a board, but everything she does seems to just accentuate some weird... _something_ about her. Off in a daze, that weird look in her eyes, she just seems to be wondering about nothing in particular. Dreamy, off in the middle of nowhere, she just burns off calories somehow. She probably spills so much food that it doesn't go to her boobs. Or her thighs. Or her hips. Dammit, she can wear anything she wants and look good.

Sixth period. History. I don't struggle too much for history. I just get interested in it. All the women who actually had some real power in this world just keep me going. Cleopatra. Queen Esther. Empress Josephine. Golda Meier. Nobody asked them for their measurements. They didn't have to sigh and wonder why they can't look like Amuro Namie, Ayumi Hamasaki, even the Suppin Girls.

Then here I am.

Seventh period. Science. Last one of the day. We're studying chemistry this year. The first thing we covered was the Law of Conservation: matter cannot be created or destroyed; it can be changed or moved. I want to move several kilos of fatty matter from my thighs and into the garbage. My stockings only cover so much, so wide. I hate being a size eight.

Why does our school forbid girls to wear stockings? I'd wear them every day if they were allowed. Something about lasciviousness and upkeep of morals. Somewhere, somehow, the Ministry of Education set out some directive and the local school board handed down a rule. The Student Council even enforces this stupid ban.

Of course, there's not a thing wrong with thigh-highs. So I just wear those. I allow the one bit of flesh that shows on my legs to be compressed, forced upwards, but as long as I adjust my skirt well enough (Why does it have to be so short?) I at least have a shot.

Every bit has to be concealed. I have to keep on exercising, keep on studying.

I can do this. I can lose ten kilos. I can have Kagura-san's body, Sakaki-san's body. I can have Chiyo-chan's brains. I can have it all. I can do it. Me, myself, and I. Kagura can't work off my flab. Chiyo-chan can't make me go up in class rank.

Osaka can't make me look better in a dress.

Tomo-chan can't make me happier.

I can only take control of that.

I can only pour myself into stockings after I shower off the sweat from running for an hour.

I can only study my brains out while I'm doing stomach crunches at night. I can only make things better for myself.

Every day, seven periods, with a half day on Saturdays and freedom on Sundays, has me trying as best I can to show who I am.

Beneath this uniform. Beneath these stockings.

Somehow, I want them to see who I really am...


	5. Purple Socks

**A/N:** Yeah, you know how I said that Osaka and Yomi were hard to write? Yeeeeah, this was pretty tough. :-( I had to take this to the experts, so many thanks to the crew on iichan's /azumanga boards and specifically, Pete Zaitcev and a guy who went by Kimurin. All those anons helped me flesh out Kagura, someone who we know next to nothing about, and give me some really good ideas and feedback. Thank you, guys. Thank you for helping spur real Azumanga discussions on the Interwebs. :-)

On with the show!**_

* * *

_**

**_5: Purple Socks_**

* * *

I've been changing. I've been improving, practicing, making it happen. I do it. I just do it.

I run in the mornings, I practice at the pool every day, and during the winter, when the school pool is closed and locked, I have to take a train a half-hour to an indoor pool and bathhouse in Sengawa. Ms. Kurosawa used a huge chunk of the swim team's budget to get us free-use passes. I end up running back home every night... no point wasting the fact that my heart's beating, moving blood around.

I've done this for years. Minus the free-use practice pool.

Why? I don't know why. Either from the trip to Hawaii when I was in elementary school (I still remember that one sunset with the green flash... "Look, daddy, it's blue and green and orange! The ocean is making a rainbow!" I was as kiddy as kids got.) or from when I saw a quiet little lake in the wilderness on a school trip in fourth grade. Aomori is incredible in the fall... I just jumped in, clothes and all, and shouted "Hey, look everybody, I'm gonna swim all the way across this lake!"

That was probably it. Ichiro, the kid who'd lived two apartments down, said "I betcha can't!"

Yeah, that was it. He told me I couldn't do it.

I was tired of hearing that I couldn't do it. "No, you can't have a mountain bike until you get better grades." "No, you can't play baseball with Ichiro and the other boys. They pushed that girl Chihaya down the other day." "No, you can't have that chawamochi until you have your vegetables."

But then there I was. They had told me I couldn't swim, so I swam. I jumped right the hell into the lake and swam.

It was about five meters before I started to sink and a teacher finally caught up and pulled me out.

Boy, I got it. Kanamori-sensei bopped me on the head a couple of times. "We'll deal with you when you get back."

You wanna know what they did? They had my parents take me to the local high school, handed me one of those boring swimsuits, and pointed me at the locker room. "That lake was at least a hundred meters across," Kanamori-sensei bellowed. "Go and do ten laps in that pool. You'll see that you can't do it."

Of course, I burbled under again.

"You see, Kagura?" my dad told me. "It's dangerous if you just go diving into things like that."

"It's not dangerous!" I shouted back the way only an angry kid could do.

They shrugged it off and I got bopped on the head again.

I've heard of worse reasons to swear revenge. Being told I can't swim when I wanted to swim. They gave me good enough reasons to want that mountain bike or for not being able to go play with Ichiro. Even that damn mochi that I would have pitched a fit for. Maybe I'm just ill-behaved. But they just said I couldn't swim that lake. They said I couldn't do that pool.

That was my last year in elementary school. The last year before I could join a sports team. Of course, in junior high, they didn't give me the time of day for the swim club.

So I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran. Every day, I would just run. I started out just running until I couldn't run anymore. It took weeks for me to figure out how to stretch out, how to warm up and cool down. I ran longer. I ran farther. I ran with half-kilo weights. I ran with kilo weights. I ran with leg weights. I ran with a mini-disc player.

I came home later and later. Dinners got smaller and smaller. But I started changing. I could feel it.

It was the last day of September, and the sun was setting. I had changed out of my uniform and I had been running for almost forty-five minutes straight. The streets of Sengawa gave way to one of the tons of canals that run through Tokyo. I barely knew where I was other than "This is the route I take on my runs."

The canal was banking west. The sun was setting in the west. Back east, it was black, and lights were coming on.

The Tokyo skyline was just an ugly, nameless blob, and it was just so damn _pretty._ I could feel the sun behind me, like it was warming me up. Of course it would. That old purple track suit I had was enough to attract heat.

I ran back to school; by this point, I was up to a kilo on each arm and leg. I ran, and instead of showering off and changing into my uniform to walk home, I put on that swimsuit, already about two sizes too small on me.

I jumped into the pool and I swam. In the shimmering light that the sun kicked up, I swam. I swam all ten laps.

Kanamori-sensei did _not_ appreciate me going back to my old elementary school, bopping him on his head, and telling him "I swam it! Now YOU get hit!"

Maybe it was the track suit. I guess that's where it came from. I guess purple looked good on me, but I always thought whatever I wore would never look good on me. Ichiro sure thought I looked dumb in anything. But it was me and that track suit. When I grew out of it, I got another purple track suit. "Purple, purple, purple!" he teased me once. Him and a bunch of other boys. "Maybe you're just Purple-chan!"

Yeah, it hurt. When you're little, things like that hurt. Of course, I punched him pretty good afterwards.

After that, I threw away the old track suit. I just ran in whatever I could find. I just didn't _feel_ right. Maybe they had gotten to me. Maybe purple just didn't feel like my color now that I'd realized the only good things came from it.

It kinda felt empty. All the changes I had made, every step I had made, was because of some old "lucky" matched set of nylon/polyester pants and a jacket. I only liked to wear purple whenever I wasn't wearing my sailor uniform. I felt cute. I felt like a girl who could do _anything._ But now... it was me being who I was.

I didn't feel the same for the rest of junior high. The Swim Club scouted me and I joined up. I got better with team practice. I finally had coaches who knew that the best way to get me going was _not_ telling me what I couldn't do. "You can be the best, but you have to practice," they told me. They showed me _how_ to practice. They showed me that I could do what I wanted. It didn't matter if I'd done everything on the influence of something like luck, something like that old track suit.

I couldn't find it anywhere when I realized I had to get it again. I couldn't find it when I realized I had to bid it a proper farewell. No more purple track suit. Good luck finding something like that in a size that fits me. Do no girls my age practice in these things?

All I could find was the socks.

My feet don't feel any lighter, they don't move any more in synch when I run, and they don't enable any superpowers.

But if nothing else, they're purple.

I can't wear them when I swim, which is when I really need every boost I can get.

But you know what? That just means I have to ride the wave of the purple socks whenever I can.

Because they're just that. Purple.


End file.
